Europe

MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/: The Belarusian Interior Ministry has opened 39 administrative and 3 criminal cases in the past 24 hours over the participation in unauthorized protests, the statement published on the ministry’s website informs.

MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/: The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) has completed its isolation in two Russian modules and is beginning to open hatches, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos told TASS on Tuesday.

"The Flight Control Center has given a command to the ISS crew to open the hatches between the Russian and American segments of the station," Roscosmos said.

The process of opening the hatches will take about one hour, it specified.

25 Aug 2020; MEMO: Greece will proceed with plans to extend a cement and barbed-wire fence that it set up in 2012 along its northern border with Turkey to prevent migrants from entering the country, the government said on Monday.

The conservative government made the decision this year, spokesman Stelios Petsas said after tens of thousands of asylum seekers tried to enter EU member Greece in late February when Ankara said it would no longer prevent them from doing so.

VIENNA (Reuters) - German coalition parties have agreed to extend a freeze on insolvency rules put in place to avoid a wave of corporate bankruptcies due to the coronavirus crisis, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters in Vienna, Scholz said his centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc sealed a compromise deal ahead of a coalition meeting scheduled later on Tuesday.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic returned to a United Nations court on Tuesday to appeal his 2017 conviction for genocide and crimes against humanity during the Yugoslav Wars.

Mladic is serving a life sentence after being found guilty of overseeing the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 and attacking and murdering civilians during the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Climate activist Greta Thunberg is back in school after a gap year in which she emerged as the voice of young people trying to save the planet from global warming and a thorn in the side of politicians she sees as dragging their heels over change.

Posting a picture of herself with a backpack and pushing a bicycle, the Swedish 17-year-old tweeted: “My gap year from school is over, and it feels so great to finally be back in school again!”

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Tuesday it saw no need for now to investigate the circumstances leading up to opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s illness and that a German clinic’s initial diagnosis of poisoning was not yet conclusive.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday called on Russia to investigate the suspected poisoning of Navalny and to hold the perpetrators accountable after German doctors found indications of a toxic substance in his body.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that a Russian armoured vehicle was attacked during a joint Russian-Turkish patrol in Syria’s Idlib province, the Interfax news agency reported.

The ministry added that two servicemen had been injured in the attack.

BERLIN, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Before his mediation trip, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Tuesday called on Greece and Turkey to discuss their territorial claims in the Mediterranean.

"A further escalation can only harm everyone, but above all those directly involved on site," Maas said in a statement released by the German Foreign Office.

"Instead of new provocations, it is now finally necessary to take steps to relax and enter into direct discussions. We want to support all of our efforts," the minister added.

LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization on Monday cautioned that using blood plasma from COVID-19 survivors to treat other patients is still considered an experimental therapy, voicing the concern as a U.S. boost for the treatment has many scientists afraid formal studies will be derailed.